Help Enough

St Neots - St Ives

15 miles, 6 locks

In which the Duck and her crew brave dismal weather, but make good time thanks to the stream and help from the crew of nb Enough, arriving in St Ives in time for a trip back into Cambridge.

Last night we had the misfortune to fall foul of some of St Neots' unsavoury characters, who let the Duck off its moorings, and proceeded to shout insults at us from the safety of the opposite river bank. We suffered no damage since the stern line remained attached and we were quickly able to remoor the bow, but it was without a backward glance that we left the town this morning, despite a grim, grey sky.

It felt quicker, moing in the opposite direction, due partly to our moving with the stream, but also to sharing all but one of the six loxks we passed through today. The first lock, St Neots, we went through alone but it is pretty quick to empty, thanks to a lack of time delay.


St Neots Lock

We were soon through, and as we passed the GOBA moorings near Great Paxton, we were joined by nb Enough, who caught up with us at Offord Lock. Fellow CWDF users and also readers of our blog, there was little we could tell them about our recent adventures that they hadn't already read! They were good company, and made working the other five locks more efficient. At Brampton, however, we were held up by a routine lock mechanism inspection, but the maintenance team were a friendly bunch, and worked the guillotine controls for us.


Sharing Hemingford Lock with nb Enough

The weather failed to improve, but we made St Ives by 4pm. On the way in, just before mooring up, we saw an unnamed narrowboat (dark blue with white details) who recognised us from the blog- hello to you all! We moored at the EA moorings by the museum and did a few odd jobs before setting out to Cambridge for a rowing outing. In the rain... It was a good chance to test the reliability of the bus route however, and we were glad to discover that the buses currently running the route we took are in fact the same vehicles which are to be used on the forthcoming guided busway. They are comfortable, with free wifi and power sockets (great for charging mobiles on the way to work!). See Kestrel's blog tomorrow for more on this!